Recording a JSON POST to File Using PHP - php

Question

I'm trying to record data that is being posted to my server to a text file. An example of the data that is being sent to my server is located here:
http://dev.datasift.com/docs/push/sample-output-file-based-connectors
It says on that page:
"For all file-based connectors, the payload is a JSON object containing metadata plus an array containing the JSON objects from your stream."
I have the following PHP at the location I have datasift sending data to:
<?php
$myFile = "testFile.txt";
$phpObj = json_decode($_POST['json']);
file_put_contents($myFile,$phpObj);
echo '{ "success": true }';
?>
I know data is being sent, but nothing is being recorded in my text file. It's just blank every time. I have no idea where to go from here unfortunately. Any ideas?

Answer 1

I think you want to get the raw content of the POST, This works for me with both POST and PUT:
$phpObj = json_decode(file_get_contents("php://input"));
$_POST contains the array from x-www-form-urlencoded content, not json.
Hope that points you in the right direction :)
Edit: #user4035 is right... your also trying to save a php object to a file... This is what i would do:
<?php
$jsonString = file_get_contents("php://input");
$myFile = "testFile.txt";
file_put_contents($myFile,$jsonString);
echo '{ "success": true }';
?>

Answer 2

You are trying to save an object, using file_put_contents. While data parameter this function "Can be either a string, an array or a stream resource"
http://php.net/manual/en/function.file-put-contents.php
Look at this example:
<?php
$json = '
{
"glossary": {
"title": "example glossary",
"GlossDiv": {
"title": "S",
"GlossList": {
"GlossEntry": {
"ID": "SGML",
"SortAs": "SGML",
"GlossTerm": "Standard Generalized Markup Language",
"Acronym": "SGML",
"Abbrev": "ISO 8879:1986",
"GlossDef": {
"para": "A meta-markup language, used to create markup languages such as DocBook.",
"GlossSeeAlso": ["GML", "XML"]
},
"GlossSee": "markup"
}
}
}
}
}
';
$phpObj = json_decode($json);
var_dump($phpObj);
$myFile = "testFile.txt";
file_put_contents($myFile, $phpObj);
?>
It parses json correctly, but doesn't save anything as well, because php doesn't know, how to serialize $phpObj object.
You need to save raw JSON string:
<?php
$myFile = "testFile.txt";
file_put_contents($myFile,$_POST['json']);
echo '{ "success": true }';
?>
Then you can read the file and parse it if necessary.

Answer 3

I try this method and it works success. So, I share this here.
Source PHP save POST data to file
web_folder/index.php
<?php
$responseBody = file_get_contents('php://input');
$json = json_decode($responseBody);
//return data
echo json_encode($json);
//Save in json file
if($json){
$fp = fopen('results_'.time().'.json', 'w');
fwrite($fp, json_encode($json));
fclose($fp);
}
?>
and run the below code in the terminal for testing, it will create a JSON file with the POST request in the same folder. (Here I used localhost) or you can test using Postman.
curl -i -X PUT -d '{"name":"codehref"}' http://localhost:8888/web_folder/index.php

Answer 4

To bypass the problem I used JSON.stringify.
'formSave' : function(project){
var s = {
"name": project.name,
"data": JSON.stringify(project.data)
};
$.post("sdcform/formSave/" + project.name, s);
}
The 'project' object contains the keys 'name' and 'data' and I only wanted to stringify the data part of it.
This way on the server I can do
$data = isset($_POST['data']) ? json_decode($_POST['data']): new \stdClass();
file_put_contents($filename, json_encode($data, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT));
I could store it directly to the file and save both conversion but I wanted to prettyfy it!
Note: Yes I know! Do not access $_POST directly.